Lenovo W510 Owner's Thread

Go to laptopvideo2go.com and see if any of the Geforce drivers for the GT330M or 335M work. You may have to add the hardware ID to the ini file.

 

Lol, no. I will try as soon as my system gets here. Then I'll know and complain. I envy you slightly, as you already have the system and can experiment

You can try what Mandrake suggested, btw.

 

anyone have a recommendation for a nice stand?

I'm looking for the best one possible (though price is a slight consideration)

Ideally usb or ac but it doesn't matter that much
thanks!

btw where do you find your estimated ship date?

 

I feel bad for you guys still waiting for your W510 or having to deal with issues after receiving your laptop. I am so happy I switched to the HP Elitebook 8440p. I got the thing in less than a week from ordering. I put up my review/comments in this thread over here. No hardware issues, bad noises, anything. Just happiness and productivity.

Sincerely, I'm offering this info to help you make an informed choice (and/or be happier with your W510 purchase). Obviously, a key difference between the two is the screen size (14" vs 15"). I was happier getting my 14". And I didn't buy the laptop for gaming -- it's okay for light gaming though, as I refer to in my post.

 

If you're happy with your purchase - that's perfect.
I prefer to wait longer and then tweak my system, but I'll not sacrifice the graphics entirely (FX880M is the lowest GPU I'm willing to accept in a business notebook) and Intel's IGP is not okay for even light gaming (other then sudoku&tetris) IMHO. Quality-wise ThinkPads are great.
Another thing, I got my W510 for 1300CAD - shipped

 

wow the perfect notebook....except for the size, gpu and HP customer support.

j/k...congrats on your purchase.

 

Hahahaha. And congrats on yours as well, I hope it works out well for you also.

I'm happy with the NVS 3100M (like an FX 380M). Blu-ray/HD playback is great, I can run the laptop display + a 24" LCD at the same time. I don't need to game, that's the only real reason to go higher to an 880 unless you have business apps that warrant intensive GPU usage.

I don't care much about customer support, especially if the machine works perfect out of the box. Most customer support divisions are terrible, and go through standard checklists of things to ask and say.

I once used a 15" laptop regularly, and after switching to a 14" on my prior laptop, I noticed I could have similar screen resolution with less weight and more portability, which was great for trips and walks to meetings.

Does seem like the Elitebook line rivals the Thinkpad in terms of build quality. Very durable and rugged.

Reps to both you guys in the last couple of posts. Thanks for the kind replies.

 

I agree, most customer support these days is unbelievably terrible.
As for the meetings and walks, everyone has ultraportables these days. Those don't impress anyone much anymore. You have to bring forth bigger guns to score your clients and partners. I find that the Alieanware M17X is perfect at grabbing the attention and first impressions.
My best partners were practically sold hands down before even looking at our presentations. Imagine a guy with a huge backpack in jeans and jacket (everyone else is in formal dress) turning on the beast and the grinding sound of 3 huge fans in combination with a crazy FX lighting theme captures all thoughts, hehe...
Sorry for the OT.

 

I would be out the door b4 too long , dells that size may assimilate you you know!!
I like to have x60s as my presentation device accompanied by LED projector that will impress anyone especially ladies they like small gadgets and BIG amount of RAM in them not otherwise. lol

 

I ordered mine 3 weeks ago, been told I should have it end of next probably. Its already been pushed back too long for me. I really dont think Lenovo should even be advertising these if they can't even get them out in a reasonable time. I will keep waiting, but not for much longer.

Whats unfortunate that for the price, quality and specs there isn't much else available out there. Otherwise i'd get something else.

 

WOW! I can barely believe it!

My W510 FHD (non-MultiTouch) just shipped! I have had this thing on order since January 7th. USA

Just getting ready to cancel if they missed the next ship date.

Dwayne

 

I just ordered this from CDW to evaluate:

ThinkPad W510 4319
Core i7 720QM
2GB DDR3 SDRAM
320GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
DVD-Writer
Quadro FX 880M
HD+

I plan on ordering a Vertex LE and 8GB DDR3 to pop in it, a few more question if you wouldn't mind answering them for me.

Is there an official bay adapter for a hard drive for the W510? I'd like to throw in the HDD it comes with for storage.

Is there a battery available for the bay?

How does the ThinkLight compare to backlit keyboards?

Thanks!

 

That's exactly the tendency. If you wanna always stay mainstream, that's fine.
I prefer the extreme. That way you have less chance to score on the average board, but much more potential with the sharks. Those who see the best (zillions of the best) every day, get bored soon. As for the girls, - that's a whole new story, where you don't even need a laptop, hehe

 

If I can ask another question. I'm used to Dell's and since this is my first ThinkPad, I was curious if anybody could recommend the installation order since I will probably format the laptop as soon as I get it to put the SSD in. Also, any necessary and unnecessary Lenovo utilities that I should install.

 

I only use Lenovo's power manager after a clean install. Dont see a need for all other stuff.

 

So basically, after the fresh install + critical updates you download and install all the latest drivers from the driver matrix?
And then just the power manager, ignoring all the rest Lenovo specific apps?
Is there a recommended driver order installation other than the general one
(chipset first, then the rest in whatever is your preferred order)?
Or are there some other recommendations?

 

well said.. but I would just install everything in his place and then decided against anything I don't like. that way he would know what he likes/dislikes.

best thing is }{cleaninstall>antivirus>chipsetdrivers>videodrivers>powermanager>and the rest of crap.

dont forget to reboot even though its W7 it didnt forget to be nasty windows when you least expect it so do the reboots dont ignore the prots if any.

 

Thanks, Tyrell
I'll probably install antivirus the last, though.
Will try their software before removing it

 

HD+ has been great. Have had my 720QM with swapped in Intel X25-M and 16GB 1066 RAM for four weeks and it's ran cool and fast like a charm, no color discoloration on the LCD.

 

So has anyone tried any Dell Latitude/Precision power adapters in the Lenovo's since they share the same plug?

 

finally received my W510 today. The FHD screen looks absolutely awesome, nothing like crappy panels in most of the recent thinkpads. Tricky Lenovo set the default dpi to 125%, however i am loving high resolution at 100% DPI. Going to play with tonight to see if there are any hidden problems.

So far I can tell that it is going to run hotter and a bit louder than my current T400s.

 

Glad to hear you received your laptop. Would you be able to comment on the colors of the wide gamut screen? That's the one thing that's got me really wondering about waiting for the FHD option to return on their web site.

 

Windows 7 does this by default on screens with certain resolutions or DPIs, it seems, since when I clean-installed Win7 Pro x64 on my T500, the DPI defaulted to 120.

It'd be great if you could post some pics, especially of the FHD screen

 

Could a few more people upload their icc color profiles for the FHD screen? The two that I could find in this thread aren't quite right for mine, and I'm still wondering how to make it a bit less radioactive.
TIA

 

colors look great as do black levels. screen is super vibrant and colors are not pallid like on alot of the laptops nowadays. Color intensity is very much comparable to my IPS desktop monitor. So far i like it very much, although i did not have enough time to evaluate it thoughly yet and i have not calibrated it yet with my spyder colorimeter.

 

asdfasdfasdf

 

i will calibrate it with my spyder calibrator (didnt get the built in optional one) and upload it here maybe tomorow at some point.

But without calibration I have to say that so far to me colors look absolutely great and super vibrant, but i wouldnt describe it as oversaturated.

 

different people different eyes, but+1 on its not over-saturated for me its just right. and +1 on color profile to be uploaded.

 

I was told today the FHD monitors would be available in 2-3 weeks or mid-April.

Has anyone ordered their machine with Norton Internet Security? Does it come with the 2010 version or 2009? They say 2009 on the website, but Norton stopped selling that late last year.

 

Has anyone installed Windows 2008 R2 on W510. That's my plan to do so after creating the backup copies. I hope all will work.

 

If Windows 7 works then Windows 2008 R2 will work.

 

Yes, works well, said Keith Combs on this blog.

 

Looks like it:

http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archive/2010/03/01/lenovo-thinkpad-w510-final-thoughts.aspx

Ooops, sorry, didn't realize this was posted already.

 

well i've worked with this thing enough to uncover some flaws in it.

First of all, the screen is not super evenly lit. There is a bit of a darker stripe towards the top middle of the panel. The good news is that it is only visible in a completely dark room on a completely black background. I probably wouldn't have noticed it if I was not playing with different monitor tests last night in a completely dark room. This uneven stripe for some reason is only seen over a black background. Overall the backlight is pretty much on par with my wife's macbook pro which has a spotlight type bleed on the bottom of the panel also evident in dark room. I dont think I will worry about it as it doesnt affect pictures in normal conditions. Have to look hard to detect it with a naked eye, but its evident when taking a picture with 1+ sec exposure time. Other than that, the colors look great, there is no ghosting and overall the screen quality is super good.

The other issue is something that is acknowledged by Lenovo on their forums and its some kind of weird issue with keyboard polling time. The order of letters in words gets messed up a bit when I type super fast. From what they said on the forums, they are working on a fix for it right now.

 

Before I order, what is this?

Express Card Slot & 5-in-1 & Contactless Screen [add $8,499.15]

 

For that price, does it matter what it is? (assuming USD)

 

Anyone have an idea which drivers am I missing and where can I find them?
I tried to install many things from Lenovo support page but still I have same "errors".

 

Start with the chipset driver. Make sure to choose the correct one for your system.

 

BTW I just got:

Intel® Core i7-820QM (Quad core 1.73GHz 8MB L3 45W)
nVidia Quadro FX880M (N10P,GLM)
500GB, 7200
2x 2GB DDR3

Any recommendation about BIOS configuration or Windows configuration because of Quad core?

Any recommendation about which ThinkVantage tools should I use if any - first time Thinkpad user ?

Regards

 

Got the W510 in today, so far I'm liking it, but,

THE HIGH PITCHED WHINING NOISE DURING BATTERY IS ANNOYING!

Any suggestions on how to get it fixed? I've read that other people have had the problem but does anybody know what will fix it?

 

Does it happen when you're plugged in?

 

No, only when I'm on battery. I read on another forum that disabling "Deeper Sleep" in the power manager helps, so I tried that and it isn't as loud, but I can still hear it.

edit: It's definitely something with regards to the CPU because when I run Prime95 it stops.

 

Since I don't have the system yet, can only guess.
There should be an option in BIOS to throttle the CPU frequency when running on battery or something similar. You could try to find it and turn it off and see if that's the cause.

 

Which specification model do you have?

 

It's shipped!!! Hooah!
Any specific review requests, guys?
Gonna run tons of tests as soon it gets here!

 

why W510 didn't offer USB 3.0 and DDR3-1333?

 

@zenit same problems with the bleed on my screen, so its just the way the diffusers probably made. if youll pay more attention to it where the dark stripe is you may even notice the LED RGB effect. more like, Pink - Green - Pale Blue. its not visible on 11th brightness setting but more prominent on 15th(max)

and must add completely invisible in the day-lit room!! so don't panic people.

Whine comes and goes on mine, its like a woman, you love her but she still complains. lol

pay attention to details... 2usb 3.0 and 1333 (but you better off buying your own) quality wise.

 

yeah, it shows on US site but not in canadian site: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...63E40139712F2C42B71AF59&tab=2#tab-container-4
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...002921:&smid=EF937EBEC5524945B8BCE1DD35E116F6

 

Is the Gobi 2000 option for the W510 worth it? Which carriers is it compatible with?

 

You should be able to answer this yourself. Do you want built-in mobile broadband? Is a built-in GPS worth $150 to you?